Montreal: A growing wave of Montreal producers, including primetime French-language suppliers, are trying their hand at English TV drama as a way to diversify.

CTV has signed acquisition, licence and development deals with various Montreal suppliers, most notably Muse Entertainment and Galafilm Productions, but also has new business with houses like La Fete Productions, producer Colin Neale, Diversus Productions and others, says Tecca Crosby, CTV’s director of drama programming.

‘The independent film community has understood that we have licensed upwards of seven TV movies a year for the last two or three years,’ says Crosby. ‘The incredible producing strength of Montreal and all the experience of producers’ makes the city ‘an interesting production and development’ resource, she says.

CTV drama in development with Muse producer Michael Prupas, in association with Bernard Zukerman of Toronto’s Indian Grove, includes an adaptation of the George F. Walker stage play Damage, The Mary Pickford Story and a third TV movie project called Windermere, a CTV Canadian Literature initiative.

‘We’re really hoping that [Pickford] can go this year, if they’re able to pull together the necessary casting and financing,’ says Crosby.

Galafilm producer Francine Allaire is in development on a CTV Heroes, Champions and Villains TV movie on Louise Arbour’s role as head of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the indictment of strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

New CBC drama

CBC is backing a new half-hour comedy-drama series called Escaping from Cirrus Productions, producer of the top-rated French primetime TV drama series Reseau TVA’s 2 Freres, coproduced with Sphere Media, as well as Radio-Canada’s La Vie, la vie, coproduced with Nicole Robert of Go Films.

Escaping is a breakthrough for Cirrus. Scripted by Steve Gallucio, author of the hit stage play Mambo Italiano, which is soon to become a Cinemaginaire movie, and director/writer Emile Gaudreault, the show has ‘extended series’ potential and is a coming-out story of a young Italian woman torn between her traditional parents and her own aspirations. The show received major support from SRC program director Daniel Gourd.

The budget will be under $300,000 an episode, or less if it’s produced as a double-shoot, says Cirrus producer Jacques Blain, who works closely with Cirrus drama manager Andre Beraud.

‘It has been very easy developing with CBC and Radio-Canada. There was a minimum of comments and requests for rewrites,’ says Blain. Both CBC and SRC will have input on casting, and CBC has accepted a young director, Patrice Sauve (La Vie, la vie), to direct. With Escaping a go at CBC, Blain says, ‘I’ll have a series that is sellable around the world.’

Developments at Muse

Prupas says Muse is developing four or five Canadian TV movies and miniseries for production in 2002.

Prupas (Tales of the Neverending Story, Royal Scandal) and Zukerman (Revenge of the Land) will coventure on a third TV movie in March, The Many Trials of One Jane Doe, the true-life story of a rape victim who sues the Toronto police. It is commissioned by CBC and is a coproduction with Kim Todd of Original Pictures in Winnipeg. Jerry Ciccoritti will direct from a Karen Walton screenplay.

(Prupas and Zukerman previously collaborated on Savage Messiah, a Showcase Original movie, and The Investigation, a $4.4-million CTV Signature Presentation on the bungled RCMP investigation into the Clifford Olson murders, directed by Anne Wheeler and coproduced by Wendy Hill-Tout of Voice Pictures, Calgary and the U.K.’s Studio 8).

Projects at Galafilm

Galafilm is developing the David Gow stage play adaptation Cherry Docs, the story of a liberal Jewish lawyer who defends a neo-Nazi skinhead charged with murder. It’s being developed for a new CBC strand called Chamber Drama, a collection of TV adaptations of Canadian theatre plays.

The house is in writing on a two-part, two-hour miniseries adaptation of the Mordecai Richler novel St. Urbain’s Horseman, also for CBC.

Galafilm and Alberta Filmworks (51%) are in post on the $4.2-million CTV movie Agent of Influence, directed by Michel Poulette (Bonanno: A Godfather’s Story). The Cold War spy drama about the troubling events leading up to the 1964 death of Canadian diplomat John Watkins, is scripted by Ian Adam and Riley Adams, and stars Christopher Plummer (The Insider) and Marina Orsini (Dr. Lucille, The Sleep Room). Allaire says the show would never have been financed without an important international sales advance from Alliance Atlantis Communications.

In November, Galafilm and Toronto’s Back Alley Films wrapped on the $4.1-million DV PAL coproduction Bliss, an erotic, women’s anthology developed as a Showcase Original Series.

Major miracles

Two current CBC/SRC series, produced or coproduced out of Montreal – the $16-million Random Passage (from the creative team of John N. Smith and Des Walsh) and the $9.5-million The Last Chapter (from director Richard Roy and screenwriter Luc Dionne) – are ‘major miracles’ in financing terms and not indicative of the general resources available for English-track drama in the city.

Because the EIP envelope for English TV drama out of Montreal ‘is very tight,’ Allaire says producers have to take on a lot of risk in development financing.

(Quebec’s ‘English-speaking population’ makes up less than 3.5% of the Canadian total based on 1996 census data. However, according to Telefilm Canada, the Quebec region receives 14% of national EIP commitments, $62.14 million, including transfers from the CTF-LFP, or more than $8.5 million, divided between drama, documentary, children’s and performing arts programs.)

Broadcaster development support ranges from 20% to 30% and is needed to trigger other development sources, starting with the most important, Telefilm, and the Cogeco Program Development Fund, says Allaire.

She also says interprovincial coproductions are ‘very good for the country.’

‘It was really important when the Albertans came here [for Agent of Influence]. Many had never been to Quebec and they were sort of wondering and somewhat apprehensive. Yes, it was like discovering a new world, but a tolerant one. And professionally the experience was very enriching for both sides,’ she says.

CTV development office

CTV will open a new development office in Montreal based on a regulatory promise following parent company’s Bell Globemedia’s acquisition of venerable CFCF-TV.

The network normally prefers opening ‘pitches of no more than five pages,’ says Crosby.

Equity investments by CTV, and a possible distribution advance, are rather rare, limited to two Heroes, Champions and Villains projects in any one year on ‘more commercial’ properties with real international sales potential. ‘The last 14 movies that we have done under Signature and CanLit have been licence only,’ adds Crosby.